ECPC Press Release - 25 April 2007

Straßbourg, 25.04.2007

The European Cancer Patient Coalition welcomes the European Parliament’s decision to vote for a robust European scientific evaluation system for medicines derived from advanced therapies. This will ensure that products and treatments from new technologies such as gene-therapy, cell-therapy and tissue engineering will now be regulated along high European safety standards, instead of risking a patchwork of national approaches or worse, leaving this whole area unregulated.  The Parliament’s decision opens the way for scientific expertise and advice to be pooled across Europe through a special Committee to be set up at the European Medicines Agency and the implementation of a strict risk management system that watches over the safety of these new products, so important for patients and citizens.

Many cancers are life-threatening, still incurable, severely debilitating and place a heavy burden of suffering on cancer patients and their families. Over 50 % of cancers are rare and patients are waiting anxiously for new treatments and cure. Cancer Patients can now gather new hope that a number of life-saving treatment options will soon become available for conditions such as lung, prostate, breast, melanoma, kidney and blood cancers. It now remains for the Council of Minister representing member states to adopt the legislation speedily before it can come into force.

“The battle against cancer may now be fought with powerful new weapons and we can look forward to the days when some cancers will become curable”, said Lynn Faulds Wood, President of ECPC and a colon cancer survivor.

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Notes to the Editor

The European Cancer Patient Coalition was founded in 2003 under the slogan “Nothing about Us, Without Us. It is committed to improving cancer prevention, screening, early diagnosis and best treatment, reducing disparity and inequality across the EU. ECPC seeks to ensure that policy makers, politicians, health professionals, the media and the general public recognise the serious nature of cancer and the need for concerted action to reduce unnecessary death and suffering. Further information can be found at www.ecpc-online.org.

Cancer in Europe: Key facts and figures

• There are more than 2 million new cases and more than 1.1 million cancer deaths in Europe each year
• Every day 5214 Europeans are diagnosed with cancer and 3185 die from their disease
• Lung cancer is the commonest form of cancer, followed closely by colorectal cancer
• Lung, colorectal and breast cancer account for two-fifths of the entire European cancer population
• Most of the other cancer are considered rare diseases according to the EU criteria affecting not more than 5/10,000 people in the EU
• The number of Europeans with cancer will increase dramatically over the next 20 years mainly due to the ageing population